Today I want to return to an article I wrote back in August attempting to predict some players on the cusp of a breakout. We will be taking a look at some of the predictions made, and see how the recommended players are performing now.

The premise was based on an article posted in June that attempted to define a breakout threshold in the NHL. The brief summary is that there tends to be a game count by which players start to break out. In this case breakout is defined as a 25 percent year-over-year increase. What they found is that average size forwards need about 200 games, and D and exceptionally small, or larger forwards need about 400 games. 

We focused on one particular quote though that seemed very measurable.

"It’s always a great indicator if you see that a player finishes the previous season with 230 or 240 career games and he just enjoyed a very strong second half. When you see that, then feel confident in a potential breakout for the year ahead."

It turns out I was able to turn that statement into variables we could export from the Dobber reports and we ended up with this list of recommended players. Not only did we recommend players who had a strong potential for a breakout, but we projected a pace given the breakout threshold was defined as a 25-percent increase over the player's previous pace. The stats below are all as of August 2022 so don't take into account any games played this season.

So the question is; how are players performing thus far (all stats as of 12/1/22)?

Let's start right at the top with Elias Pettersson, who has started the season with 27 points in 23 games for a 96-point full-season pace. So far? Definitely on pace. This one might have been a little bit of a gimme as Pettersson has already put up between a 70- and 80-point pace three times in his career and but he was putting up close to a 100-point pace over the back half of 21-22. Still, he had some down periods in there and could still have been a bit of a question mark going into 22-23. Generally, his performance looks good under the hood too. Maybe a touch high, but nothing wild. Nothing to really suggest that he can't continue to do something similar going forward.

In Nick Suzuki I was looking at a player who likely was going to bounce back from a disappointing 21-22 season, but maybe not quite hit the additional 25-percent mark. Thus far he has put up 24 points in 22 games for an 89 full-season point pace. Suffice it to say thus far he is definitely exceeding the 76-point pace projected. Another definite win here to date. He is still seeing career high ice time and shooting two per game, but is seeing some pretty dramatic luck. His personal shooting percentage is up around 25 percent (vs his career 11-12 percent), and his team five-on-five shooting is up around 15. Both of those could reasonably be half of their current rates. If we were to see an abrupt return to his norm, we would probably be looking at closer to a 65-point pace. Keeping any of his current fortune, or improving performance on the power-play would obviously boost that pace. Even if/when his pace slows down though he has enough points banked that he could still be very close to that 76-point pace by the end of the season.

Tage Thompson. Not sure what else needs to be said. We touched on him last week, and he has been quite the story. We won't go into detail here, but his 104-point pace certainly exceeds the projected 89ish point pace. To date then, another clear winner for the projection. There are a couple of flags, but not as dramatic as Suzuki's, plus with all the points he has banked so far it really wouldn't be entirely surprising to see him meet that preseason projection. That was something I was worried about during the offseason – that he might have trouble meeting, let alone exceeding, what seemed like a lucky point pace in 21-22. Thus far however he is doing even better and those worries seem a little foolish.

Our first real miss of this list is Mathieu Joseph. He is currently on a 27-point pace. Context is king here though, as the data we pulled from was his arrival in Ottawa where he saw a much more prominent role, and got some luck. We were also still only pegging a breakout at 45 points. Then Ottawa went and added Claude Giroux and Alex Debrincat which essentially killed his value.

Roope Hintz has started his season with an 89-point pace. Close enough to the 92-23-point projection that I am going to call this another win for now. He is seeing a bit less ice time so far this season, so we will see how that impacts him going forward. His underlying number seem decent, maybe a touch high if anything, but thus far he is close to on track for that breakout.

I was concerned that Trevor Moore might have a difficult enough time repeating last season's performance since so much of it came as a surprise. That worry has not borne out thus far. His current 50-point pace matches that from last season, but we aren't seeing the 60-plus-point breakout suggested above. He is seeing by far the best ice time and shot rates of his career, and both his personal and team five-on–five shooting percentages are a bit low so we certainly could see his pace increase going forward, but as of now, the 60 plus projection is looking like a miss.

Robert Thomas has been somewhat a victim of St. Louis's cold start to the season, "only" putting up 17 points in 19 games for a 79-point pace. Only is doing a lot of work there as prior to last season we would be ecstatic about this production. As I mentioned over the summer a 100-plus-point pace seemed a pretty dramatic long shot given what he did in 21-22, and that is bearing out. Point-per-game seems like the breakout, and it occurred last season – a bit earlier than projected by our theory above. I will count this one a miss too, but it seemed pretty clear this one was always going to be unlikely.

Conor Garland made this list only by the slimmest of margins so the fact that he is not meeting expectations isn't too much of a surprise. He is on a 37-point pace, well down from his 55-point pace from last season, let alone his breakout projection. Like with Joseph though this is another context driven (that we couldn't have predicted) result. He is down a chunk of ice time per game, and Vancouver (outside of a couple of top-line skaters) has been an absolute mess to start the season.

Overall our list is 50/50 on hits, but I think there are pretty reasonable arguments for most of the misses (plus Joseph still wasn’t projected to be fantasy relevant even with the breakout). That hit rate is pretty good, but we will check back at the end of the year and see how it fared overall.

That is all for this week. Do your part to support organizations working to make hockey for everyone.

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